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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING October 2016 WINES&VINES 67 The Vogt family planted a total of 6 acres of grapes in 2010 and 2011; the winery was bonded in 2010 and officially opened Dec. 15, 2011. Osborne had made 8,000 gallons of wine, and within a year they were sold out. In 2012, production was increased to 12,000 gal- lons, and the following year to 26,000 gallons. Vicky Vogt had planned for the winery to ex- pand, but she never envisioned that growth would happen quite so quickly. According to the Wines Vines Analytics Winery Database, Four Daughters Vineyard and Winery makes between 50,000 and 499,999 cases per year. Early in his winemaking career, Osborne noticed that many hard ciders were being made with artificial flavoring and colors, but none emphasized the natural flavor of the apples. He decided to try making a cider using local Hon- eycrisp apples and no flavorings or sugar. He made small lots of cider in 2012 that were then sold only on tap in the Four Daughters tasting room under the name "Loon Juice." The cider is light in color with a crisp, pleasant apple taste and a great acid/sugar balance, and visitors to the winery loved it. Officially launched into distribution in August 2014, Loon Juice hard cider was packaged in 5-liter mini-kegs custom- made by a German company. With sales of wine and demand for Loon Juice increasing, the family decided they needed to double the size of their sales, wine production and storage areas. In 2014-15, a 9,000-square- foot addition to the winery created space for the Barrel Room (a working barrel-storage facil- ity that also can be used as an event space to seat 300 people), a pre-function Cocktail Room that can handle 200 guests standing or 80 seated, a private dining room for 20 people, an expanded kitchen facility that will allow for cooking classes and a wine-storage area. In 2016, the winery expanded again, adding a separate 12,000-square-foot building dedi- cated to the production of Loon Juice. The cider facility, with higher ceilings, more space and a better design, was finished by June 1, and this summer Osborne created four other flavors of cider: Tea Time, Ginger Mojito, Strawberry Shandy and Grow a Pear. The vineyard The Vogts farm approximately 5,000 acres, so they had some choices for land to use for a vineyard and winery. They selected a parcel of 9 acres near the intersection of two state high- ways about a half hour south of Rochester, Minn. The topsoil on the site is shallow, drains well and is characterized as dry and rocky, which is typical for the Upper Mississippi River Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA) that includes the Four Daughters location. The AVA is the largest in the country—covering 29,914 square miles—and includes parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. Like many of the 32 wineries within this AVA, the Vogts planted cold-climate varieties devel- oped by Elmer Swenson and the University of Minnesota breeding programs including Bri- anna, Frontenac, Marquette, Edelweiss, Fron- tenac Gris and St. Croix; all are own-rooted. Kristin Osborne, the winery's marketing di- rector, told Wines & Vines, "We knew that VSP was a solid, proven option for trellising, but with the rich, fertile soil in southeast Minnesota, the moveable wire lyre, in theory, would be a much better option for our vigorous vines. We're the only ones in the Midwest with this trellis system (it's labor intensive and very difficult to build). Once it's up and managed properly though, you should nearly double your production per acre. So, in theory, we knew this would be the best trellis system for us, but we didn't know how the growth would play out." As a consequence, Patrick Sween, the vine- yard manager, noted, "We put half of each variety on VSP and half on Lyre." In order to allow him to change the trellis system in the future, the vines are more widely spaced than in many vineyards: There are 10 feet between rows and 8 feet between vines, resulting in approximately 575 vines per acre. "In addition to the cold-climate grapes, we've got a couple rows of oddballs," Sween continued. "There's some small amounts of Riesling, Aligoté, Chardonnay, Grüner Veltliner, Gewürztraminer and Muscat, plus some miscel- laneous vines we brought back from workshops at the university." Most of the vinifera vines came from the nursery at Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyards in New York, while the source for the Minnesota varieties was Winterhaven Vine- yard and Nursery in Janesville, Minn. The winery has no plans to expand the vine- yard, which is fine with Sween. He does most of the work in the vineyard manually but oc- casionally brings in some other family mem- bers to help, especially in managing the Brianna grapevines. He has few problems with insects and is fortunate not to have any Japa- nese beetles, but the humidity in Minnesota makes it necessary to spray multiple times for powdery and downy mildew. The row middles are planted with turf grass, with no cover crop under the trellis. Round-up is sprayed early in the season, and other herbicides are applied as needed during the growing season. Véraison occurs about Aug. 1, and Sween anticipates harvest may be somewhat early this year. In order to control the labrusca character in some of the varieties, he plans to pick Edel- weiss at about 15° Brix and Brianna at 18°-19° Brix. He usually gets 18 tons of fruit from the 6 acres at Four Daughters; the remainder of the Minnesota varieties are purchased from nearby vineyards to give the winery flexibility in case of localized spring or fall frosts. Harvest is all done by hand. The winery Making wine from Minnesota cold-climate va- rieties offers challenges that don't often occur with other hybrid grapes or with vinifera. Min- nesota hybrids can have high acid levels, some- times over 14 g/L; pH numbers can be as low as 3.0; Brix numbers vary from very low (such as the Edelweiss mentioned above) to more normal, between 21° and 24° Brix, but with Marquette and Frontenac Gris sometimes achieving sugar levels as high as 28° Brix. White wine grapes arrive at the winery ei- ther in picking lugs or MacroBins, depending on the grower. The vineyard at Four Daughters supplies only part of the fruit needed for their wine. Consequently, Osborne brings in grapes from growers in the Upper Mississippi River Valley AVA and in other parts of Minnesota, and smaller amounts of grapes or juice from California. Osborne likes to press whole clusters, and the grapes are put by hand into the SK 28 hl pneumatic membrane press from Prospero Equipment. The juice then goes into one of the Letina tanks from G.W. Kent to cold settle. The glycol chiller keeps the juice at around 40° F, KEY POINTS Producing wine from Minnesota hybrid grapes and apple cider called Loon Juice, Four Daughters Vineyard and Winery is now Minnesota's largest winery after only five years in business. The winery doubled in size in 2014 with the addition of event spaces, a restaurant and storage space for wine and barrels. A 12,000-square-foot cidery was constructed in 2016. A 6-acre estate vineyard supplies some of the Minnesota hybrids for their wines; other grapes are sourced from nearby vineyards and occasionally from as far away as California. Their cider, Loon Juice, is made from Honeycrisp apples, a variety developed by the University of Minnesota. Farmers Gary and Vicky Vogt decided to start growing grapes with hope their daughters and sons-in-law would join the family business.